Baroque Questions:
1. When and where does the Baroque occur?
2. What is the Baroque world like?
3. What’s some Baroque period literature?
4. What are the Baroque arts like in Italy and Spain?
5. What are the major architectural achievements of Baroque Spain and Italy?
6. Who are the Italian and Spanish Baroque artists?
7. What are the Baroque arts like in France and England?
8. What are the major architectural achievements of Baroque France and England?
9. Who are the French Baroque artists?
10. What are the Baroque arts like in the Netherlands?
11. Who are the Dutch Baroque artists?
12. What music basics do I need to know?
13. What is Baroque music like?
14. Who are its chief composers?
1. When and where does the Baroque occur?
• Refers to the arts of the 16 and early 1700’s
• The term Baroque was derogatory
• In your book:
Counter-reformation Baroque -- Italy and Spain
Aristocratic Baroque -- England and France
Bourgeois Baroque -- The Netherlands
2. What is the Baroque world like?
An age of opposition
Rational v. Spiritual
Majesty v. Domesticity
Catholic v. Protestant
Printing v. Censorship
Absolutism v. Fair Rule
A. History
Age of the absolute monarch
Italy and Spain decrease in influence, England and France increase
30 Years War (1618 to 1648)
Treaty of Westphalia -- each German state chooses its own religion
By 1650, religion’s importance is in decline
B. Religion
Protestantism is dominant in the North
Council of Trent (1545 to 1563)
Jesuits (1540) founded by Ignatius Loyola: elite educators & church’s “right arm”
Spanish Inquisition (begun in 1478) “exile or baptism”
Holy Office of the Roman Inquisition (1542) prevents Protestant spread within
Italy
C. Economics
Trade
New World = revenue!
Slave Trade
Joint Stock Companies
Empire building!
US colonization
D. Science
The Scientific Revolution!
All scientists of the period follow “The Scientific Method”
“Science sees a dynamic yet understandable universe”
1. Nicolas Copernicus -- 1543, On the Motion of Heavenly Bodies, printed and
banned -- promotes the heliocentric universe.
2. Johannes Keppler -- planetary motion
3. Galileo Galilei -- early schooling in a monastery, U. of Pisa, professor at U of
Padua, refines telescope
1616, church declares that he’s “untrue” on Copernican theory.
Trial in 1633, forced to recant.
Maintains that scripture was not meant to teach science.
House arrest after trial, is not to practice astronomy, publishes 2 more books
4. Isaac Newton -- laws of gravity from Galileo and Keppler; laws of motion,
shape of orbit = determined by gravity
5. William Harvey -- first circulatory map
6. Anton Von Leewenhoek -- first to see microscopic organisms; credited with
the invention of the microscope
3. What’s some Baroque period literature?
John Donne -- Metaphysical Poet
Meditation 17
No man is an island entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were;
any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know
for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Holy Sonnet 10
Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and souls delivery.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.
4. What are the Baroque arts like in Italy and Spain?
Arts react to the Reformation
Many new building projects assert supremacy
Counter-Reformation churches are light, spacious, cheerful
Heavily religious themes in arts
Artists are enlisted to glorify religion
Art is unified by light and/or motion
5. What are the major Baroque architectural achievements of Italy and Spain?
A. Il Gesu (Rome)
Note the renaissance elements in a new arrangement!
Domed crossing; “Most influential church design of the past 4 centuries”
B. San Carlo Alle Quattro Fontane (Rome)
Note the renaissance elements in a new arrangement!
C. St. Peter’s façade and colonnade (Rome)
Gianlorenzo Bernini
Note the renaissance elements in a new arrangement!
D. Escorial Palace (Madrid)
“Nobility without arrogance, majesty without ostentation”
Hotel, monastery, church, tombs, seminary, archive, royal residence
500,000 square feet!
6. Who are the Italian and Spanish Baroque Artists?
A. Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Calling of St. Matthew
Conversion of St. Paul
Most revolutionary of his century
“Bad boy” of Baroque art
Influenced ALL the Baroque artists to come
“Caravaggisti”
Calling shows us religious story in “today’s” terms, chiaroscuro to the point of
tenebrism
Tenebrism
Calling shows us Michelangelo’s influence, tenebrism
Conversion shows us tenebrism, great foreshortening, and compositional interests
trumping reality
B. Artemisia Gentileschi
Judith Slaying Holofernes
• Orazio (father) painter
• First woman accepted into Florence’s Academy of Art
• Judith shows us strong female heroine typical of Gentileschi, tenebrism
• Painted this theme many times for many patrons
C. El Greco (Domenicos Theotocopoulos) Martyrdom of St. Maurice
Burial of Count Orgaz
• Learned from mannerist Tintoretto
• Appeals to a mystical audience -- very intense in Spain
• Burial shows us color, movement, mannerist influence, traditional role of good
works in salvation
• Most unlike his group
D. Diego Velazquez
•
•
•
Water Carrier of Seville
Las Meninas
Water Carrier (painted when he was 20) shows tenebrism, Catholic idea of mercy
Las Meninas considered by many to be the greatest painting in the WORLD!
Here is why: self-portrait (at work), group portrait, royal portrait, interesting use
of mirrors and frames, art collection, tenebrism, fascination with light
E. Gianlorenzo Bernini
•
•
•
•
Fountain of the Four Rivers
Apollo and Daphne
St. Teresa in Ecstasy
Louis XIV
Next to Michelangelo in quality (surpasses? You decide!)
Think Hellenistic!
Bernini “gives Rome its public face”
Fountain of the Four Rivers: Danube, Rio de la Plata, Nile, Ganges
7. What are the Baroque arts like in France and England?
Louis XIV -- 72 year reign (1643 to 1715)
“Sun King” is greatest art patron EVER
Art becomes an outreach of the monarch -- opulent and rich!
Louis XIV creates the academy system
Academies run judges, commissions, licensing, degrees, Salon participation.
Merchant class influence
Art seems unified by motion and overall composition
England -- limited monarchy
Still rich and grand but more subdued: “too rich for the English diet”
England has architecture, but no significant art/sculpture
Secular themes more popular in Fr & Eng
8. What are the major architectural achievements of the Baroque period in England and
France?
A. Louvre (Paris)
• Architects: Bernini, Perrault
• Decline of Italian influence in France
• 40 acres! Renaissance elements, new arrangement
• 1793: The Louvre becomes a national museum
• 1 million plus artworks
B. Versailles (Paris)
• Land of Louis XIII
• Built from 1661 to 1708 (main bldgs)
• Site of govt 1682
• Site seen as previously “unsuitable”
• 2 architects: Louis LaVau, Jules Hardouin Mansart
• “Tyranny over nature, subduing it with money and art”
• Revolutionizes city planning
• Positives: symbol of nobility, glory of France; ART!
• Negatives: display brings about downfall, “breaks the bank”, loss of life
• (Formerly) the largest royal residence in the world
• 1300 main palace rooms (about 12.5 acres of palace)
• 1200 fountains
• 1000 trees in “orangerie”
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
5000 residents
250 acres of manicured garden
Total estate: over 2000 acres
many garden buildings, grottoes, an aviary!
Hall of Mirrors ( 235 ft long)
Chapel built 1699
Additional buildings are rococo: Petite Trianon, Hameau
One of the 1400 fountains
Chapel Royale (Marie Antoinette & Louis 16 married here)
Orangerie
C. St. Paul’s (London)
• Christopher Wren (1632 - 1723) architect
• Astronomy Chair at Oxford until his 30’s
• Great fire of 1666
• Wren’s vision: city of steeples, all leading to St. Paul’s
• 51 churches from 1670 to 1686
• St Paul’s: Only cathedral in Europe to have 1 architect, 1 mason, 1 bishop
• St. Peter’s Influence
• Wren and Gibbs churches -- models for colonial churches here!
• Epitaph in St. Paul’s
9. Who are the French Baroque artists?
A. Peter Paul Rubens
Henry IV Receiving. . .
The Garden of Love
Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus
B. Nicolas Poussin
Rape of the Sabine Women
I Too Once Dwelled in Arcady
Flemish, Catholic
Studies Titian, Caravaggio
Style: Rubenesque
Subjects: Classical and others
French, Catholic
Studies Titian, Caravaggio
Style: formal, aloof
Subjects: Classical, battle,
heroism, “noble and serious
actions”
“Ideal” in the academy
Rich color and drama
“academic”
“hard and statuesque”
“encourages meditation”
Prolific! 2000
Rich color and drama
“free”
“soft and fleshy”
“volcanic energy”
Let’s play a game. . . guess the artist: Rubens or Poussin
Venus and Adonis
The Childhood of Jupiter
Solomon’s Judgment
Venus in Front of Her Mirror
Flight Into Egypt
Madonna Adored by Four Penitents and Saints
10. What are the Baroque arts like in the Netherlands?
Netherlands is run by governors
One of Europe’s most prominent powers
Commerce and trade are huge – “tulip fever”
Secular themes most popular here
Lots of merchant class influence
Home focused art, little architecture or sculpture
Art here is unified through light and motion
11. Who are the Dutch Baroque Artists?
A. Rembrandt Van Rijn
Dr. Tulp’s Anatomy Lesson
The Night Watch
Self Portrait with Saskia
Numerous other self-portraits!
B. Jan Vermeer
View of Delft
Art of Painting
Prodigy!
Nothing known of training
Sphinx of Delft
Influences: Titian, Raphael, Caravaggio
Interest: effect of light
Lots of work!
Early: theatrical space
Later: relationships, emotion, psychology
62 self portraits!
Protestant
Rich in love, dies impoverished
Interest: effect of light
Used a camera obscura
Halation & color intensity
Signed some, dated 5
36 in all, minimized narratives
meditative moments, “fragments of
the same world”
Catholic
Big family, dies in debt
The Slaughtered Ox
The Jewish Bride
The Guitar Player (Paul McCartney asked to buy it. Didn’t get it!)
What does our book say about them?
Rembrandt
Vermeer
His “light is the glow of the
human spirit”
His light “is that of
the open window”
“He tries to penetrate the
world of appearances”
He “is content with
the visual image”
“With his warm personal
quality, [he] embraces humanity”
“with his cool impersonality,
[he] encompasses space.”
“Concerned at all times with
moral beauty”
“[concerned] with
physical perfection”
“[his] dramas need only the
crescendo of a single color from
deep brown to golden yellow”
“Vermeer’s absence of drama
demands the entire spectrum
of colors”
“inner glow expressed with
chiaroscuro”
“objective play of atmospheric
light”
“philosopher”
“jeweler”
“lays the soul bare in his
moving characterizations”
“delights the eye with his unique
perception of the quality and
texture of things”
BAROQUE MUSIC! But, before we start. . .
12. What are the music basics I need to know?
1. Theme -2. Movement -3. Symphony -4. Cantata -5. Fugue -6. Toccata -7. Concerto -8. Suite -9. Sonata -10. Oratorio -11. Opera -12. Operetta --
Now. . .
13. WHAT IS BAROQUE MUSIC LIKE?
• Renaissance music focuses on simplicity; melody
• Baroque music emphasizes harmony, counterpoint, several melodies layered,
complexity!
• Baroque music sees:
Staff of five lines develops
Major and minor develops
Set number of beats per measure
Instruments for home -- wooden flute, viol, violin, harpsichord, voice
Energy in music
14. Who are its composers?
Johann Sebastian Bach
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
Sheep May Safely Graze
Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring
George Fredriech Handel
Messiah
Water Music
1685 – 1750 (end of baroque)
German
wrote more music than all other
Baroque composers combined!
orphaned at 10, taught by dad
and brothers
2 wives, 20 kids! (some don’t survive)
4 kids become composers
known for his technical genius
cantatas and “inventions”
lots of church music, 3 services a day
1685 – 1759
German
oratorios
Never more than 50 mi. from home
Went blind
affluent family, tutored
never married
known for opera and oratorio
lots of secular music (Fireworks Suite,
Water Music)
traveled all over Europe
Went blind